As a child, without even realizing it, I grew up to find that writing was my passion. It started by writing small stories in class to having a small journal, to later auditioning to Douglas Anderson my freshmen year. I never personally had my work ever checked, so I went out on a limb by going by my own terms. When I auditioned I later found out that I did not get accepted, and when someone gets rejected because of his or her writing, it puts a lot of negative thoughts into their head. I lost in touch with my inner voice and my writing, because I lost the confidence that I had in the first place. My work never being judged, the first time hurts. I always thought “man this is it, there’s no point anymore,” but as freshmen year started to go by, I still found myself making notes on random pieces of paper. Usually it was little poems, and sometimes it’d turn into stories. That’s when I realized that this is what I want to do, and this is the way I stay in contact with my emotions. I was never the kid to tell someone how they felt because I always felt that I did not have a strong voice to make a statement, but in my writing I did. I remember clearly that I got made fun of for having a journal or being into books. And I find that funny because as years went by, now it’s “different”. Again over time, when I entered sophomore year for this school, that’s when it really hit me. I’m not trying to sound like a typical student that says, “oh, it changed my life,” because I did the changing but having classes that finally explored more regions for me, helped. I started to view things more creatively and studying more people on the way they behave. Ideas for writers spark anywhere, and for me it was; think different, write different. I'm glad that I did not give up on it. I experience a lot of emotions with detachment and hurt; with writing that’s how I stay sane. I take what I know and how I feel, and turn it into a piece that I know when I grow older, I will look back at. A writer can have their times where they leave their writing, but it’s in our blood. It controls every aspect in our life, and that’s what makes us different. -Elma Dedic, Co-Marketing/Social Media Editor

Almost mid-way through my sophomore year, I just lost writing. I felt no want or even a need to write and the work that I was producing I didn’t care about. Having lost this practically innate feeling that had always been a part of me was strange and I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong. Can there be a wrong way of writing? At this time, in our creative writing class our teacher, Ms. Bundy, had us studying Magical Realism, which I didn’t really like anyways, so I blamed my not-so-enthusiastic attitude towards writing on the fact that I just couldn’t write Magical Realism. It was denial in its finest form. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write, but that I just couldn’t. Or this is what I told myself. At this time, my life was the epitome of a teenage movie. I bathed in my teen angst. Writing seemed trivial in comparison to everything else happening because it seemed like everything was happening to me and I had no way to stop any of it. In the spare time I could wedge into my day, I used to write. I carried my journal with me everywhere I went. And now, my journal laid haphazardly in the space between my desk and my bed, mocking me, so I hid it underneath schoolwork and that was my new excuse; I was too busy with school to write more than I already had to. I kept coming up with different excuses to defend the fact that I just could not stand writing. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. Writing became a chore. I watched episodes Criminal Minds, instead of revising a story or a poem, and I saw no problem in this. I went on like this through a good portion of the second quarter because it was fine. Ms. Bundy didn’t comment on how my pieces were lackluster or the fact that my notes turned into chicken scratch. It wasn’t really until winter break when I realized how much I missed the act of writing. I missed having the drive to want to sit down and write anything whether it be amazing or absolutely horrendous. Winter break meant that I had an excessive amount of time on my hands. With winter break came a tsunami of various emotions, ranging from joy to desperation to anger. I felt heavy from everything I wasn’t writing. So, I forced myself to journal. Every day, I made myself sit down and write. It didn’t matter what I wrote as long as I was writing. Honestly, it was a chore and I loathed it, but I still did it. I still sat down with my journal and wrote. Slowly, it began to feel familiar, less mechanical. I felt light again. I had to learn how to love writing again. Winter break ended and I worried that I would fall into the same habit of creating excuses to not write and slide back into the same funk I was in. I refused to make writing my New Year’s resolution because no one ever commits to those and I needed to commit to writing. Making time for writing is hard and I don’t write every single day and I wish I could say that I did, but that’s not how it is. For me, writing is a way to take a weight off of myself and put it onto paper. If I could weigh my journal, it would weigh 2000 pounds. There are nights where I choose writing over sleeping because I know I cannot carry that weight anymore, which is okay. Writing is a matter of making life easier because that is the only way I know how to. -Winnie Blay, Junior Managing Editor/Submissions

To be a writer does not mean that that piece of you is always going to be accessible. Sometimes, you can go weeks or months without feeling the need to put anything of value into this outlet. Often times, it is a certain circumstance that takes this fire from you. Ironically, this becomes a cause of misery that works as fuel to start back up again on the individual’s journey as a writer. Personally, the experience that made me temporarily quit writing was when I got my first speeding ticket. It was not the ticket that really took my motivation, but the fact that this fine resulted in me losing my car for several weeks. In addition to this, I had to work to gain the funds to pay for it. Without this transportation, I realized how much freedom I didn’t have before I gained my license. This confinement resulted in me remaining indoors, wasting my time with sitcoms and the drawn out plots of video games. While this may sound like a pleasurable alternative to leaving the house, as it usually is, it quickly became lonely when none of my friends could be reached through anything other than text and the occasional phone call. I lost my motivation to try to do anything. It seemed that with my loss of freedom came the loss of responsibility and admiration for the kind of life I was on the path to living. As I noticed more frequently how far behind I was on the lives of those I once cared about, I decided something would have to change. I found the old bike that I had once been closely acquainted with before the introduction of a car. The wheels weren’t deflated yet so I kept riding north until they gave out to the sand they met. I seemed to have forgotten how close the beach was to where I once lived. By this time, it was nearing sunset and the sky lowered its eyes to cast shades of violet, grey, and pink along the thin space between the sea and the sky. I sat beneath an abandoned life guard chair as people left the spectacle of the shore behind. I remained stagnant, moving the sand gently over and under my toes thoughtfully. As dramatic as it sounds, I felt so filled and peaceful then that it only felt appropriate to pull out the notebook that followed me everywhere and its accompanying pencil; I had to write. Though what I wrote wasn’t anything incredibly eloquent or beautiful, it was enough to make me feel as if I had rejoined the untied ends of my disconnected attention together. From there, I suddenly began to turn back to my methods of using writing as a form of release. This practice allowed me to gain peace with myself and my decisions. As an appropriate accompaniment to this rejuvenation, the next week was the beginning of school. The reconnection with my friends and a well-planned schedule made it much easier to remain consistent with the art I practiced and how often I produced it. Since I have begun again, I feel as if I am reconnecting with an old friend. Though I am behind, I am confident that writing is something that will follow me through everything, despite its ebbs and flows. In my experience, it is the most underappreciated foundation of the human temple. I hope to one day not neglect this pillar as often as I have, as I clearly see that this practice only truly has a positive impact on the life of the writer and, if the writer is successful, the reader. -Kathryn Wallis, Junior Art Editor

I remember at any social event; my mother would tell everyone I had my own imaginary friend. This made me feel stupid of course, shy even to get to know people. At such a young age I created a bubble, separating the outside world from my own imaginations and desires. My mother thought my imaginary friend was something I could see and hold on to. I never considered this imaginative being a physical entity or a way to escape my social encounters. It never had a name either. I communicated with my imaginary friend in the form of little sentences in a glittery journal I got for Christmas because I was too nervous to speak. Always confused with Spanish and English language, I was scared to mess up in front of my friends. I didn’t want them making fun of me for not knowing English. I spent up until fourth grade with speech difficulties and I resorted to writing my conversations down to pass my classes. I fell in love with writing as a form of communication first and then it just disappeared. At the end of my childhood and especially during late stages of my preteen years, I was mad at writing. In the sense that I was betrayed, writing left me for a while. Like an old friend, writing just moved on from me and it left me feeling extremely bitter. My family was going through financial difficulties and I was still confused about my growing body. I’d thought about what I wanted to say when writing came back. “Hey um, you pretty much left me at my lowest point in life. Thanks, I hate you”. At that age, I told myself that writing left me, like it was something it could ever leave. I was defensive. I left writing. After my trip to Colombia for a summer, I had recurring night terrors of not being able to speak. One morning I woke up to a dream that a man from Bogota removed my eyes as I was walking down the street. My experience in a third world country made me realize my fortune in the United States. The hot water, the air conditioning, the equality. I never realized how free I actually was. My dreams of Colombia’s brutality pushed me to write until the sun rose, and if I was tired, I slept in a closet where no one could see me. Instead of being afraid to speak, I was afraid to step outside. I wrote long poems, poems that had two lines, and poems that tasted like hot dogs they sold after church. I wrote when I told my grandmother I hated her in front of a mountain that stretched all the way to Venezuela. Sometimes I painted with my neighbors when there wasn’t any money for paper. It was the strangest feeling when my old friend came back. We were both familiar with each other and it was almost like we picked up right where we left off. I was still bitter at my old friend but I never stopped coming back for more. Today I realized that I am addicted to writing, addicted to communicating how I feel on paper. The only way I got over my fear of speaking was to write about being afraid. -Evelyn Alfonso, Poetry Editor

Near the end of my sophomore year, I felt very distant from the work I was producing and my creative writing classes in general. Nothing really drastic happened, I just woke up one day and no longer wanted to write. I’ve found that it sometimes happens that way. Something in me had severed the connection I’d felt in holding a pencil to a piece of paper, and I didn’t have the energy to reconnect the ties. I got through the rest of the year emotionlessly, and that was that. At the start of the summer I spoke to my mom about the way I was feeling and about switching schools. It didn’t feel right to continue at the school when someone new could take my place, someone who stepped into the writing classrooms and felt a purpose. I didn’t feel that way anymore. I wanted to leave. And I was going to; my mom agreed that if by the middle of the summer I still felt the same way we’d look into different schooling options for me. I tried my hardest to get back into writing that summer. I bought multiple journals took time throughout the day to free write but never saw any potential. Mid-summer came and I still felt distant from myself as a writer. Somewhere along the way, however, I’d let my mom talk me into staying at Douglas Anderson and giving it one last try. She said if I hated it after the first couple of weeks I didn’t have to stay. She knew how happy the school made me and didn’t want to see me give that up. I didn’t hate Douglas Anderson, I just felt guilty for taking someone else’s spot there. The idea of leaving really hurt, which is why I allowed my mom to change my mind. The first day I walked into my poetry class on the first day of junior year, the shift was almost immediate. I’m still not completely sure what it was, but I knew that the year was going to be different, and a part of me knew I wouldn’t leave after all. After a couple of weeks, I realized what the problem had been; people. I had surrounded myself with negative people, who had already lost their connection with writing and no longer cared about what they did. They wrote meaningless pieces and turned them on. As a very easily influenced person, I let that state of mind slip into me and I became that. Once I realized this, I dedicated myself to working harder and pushing myself to love my art again. It took me two full notebooks of writing before I decided I could call myself a writer again. I think I would’ve gotten there sooner, but I didn’t fully trust that the connection was real. In the end, though, I realized how lost I had felt without writing. That’s what made me see that it was real; once I no longer felt lost, when I knew who I was again, I was a writer. -Kinley Dozier, Managing Editor

I don’t think there has been a very specific moment in my life where I’ve lost my love for writing. I believe I’ve had a number of little moments where I felt like giving up on writing for many reasons; whether I was stuck in a piece or couldn’t get a piece started at all, or I was just disappointed in what I wrote, that it didn’t feel like I’d taken the writing to its full potential. I could never imagine myself totally giving up on writing. I can’t help but write every day, not just because of classes and assignments, but also because my need to put down the things I see. I observe my surroundings and in them, I find characters, plot and conflict, abstract ideas. These things I put down, mentally at the time, then later on paper. Truthfully, I don’t immediately put these ideas to the test in a piece. I write fragments and leave them as is. Although jotting down ideas is a part of being a writer, it is nowhere near the full scope of writing. At the beginning of each school year is when I, in a way, reboot myself as a writer. During the summer, I never find time to write pieces and hardly find time to read. It’s not necessarily that I lose my love for writing, it’s just that I lose some of my abilities. I become unfamiliar when I’m away from it for too long. I attribute my ability to rekindle my love for writing to my teachers and peers. Again, I regain it at the beginning of school. Assignments in creative writing can be very stressful because they require a lot, mentally and emotionally. Being in the class environment with people who have the same love for writing as I do and knowing that they understand is encouraging. It’s a reminder that I’m not alone and that it’s not just a grade, it’s practice within my craft. I’m forced to clean off the rust of not having written anything for two and a half months. Another way I rekindle my love for writing is reading other people’s work. It’s another way of understanding that I’m not the only one on a journey to knowing myself, things instilled in me and around me, things I know too well and don’t know at all. –Lindsay Yarn, Digital Media Editor

It was towards the end of last school year when I lost my love for writing. All my pieces seemed lack-luster and dull, due to a combination of the persistent tiredness that usually rooted itself around all of the tests in May, and a lack of inspiration from a year of nonstop writing. I found myself hopelessly jotting down story after story and doing everything I could to finish out the year strong; I would make character maps and force myself to journal every day and endlessly research ways to regain what I had lost, however nothing seemed to work and once school ended, all of my efforts seemed useless and I gave up once and for all, taking the time off to stop stressing about what I was putting down on the page and focus more on relaxing. The idea, in theory, seemed helpful, however the longer break I took, the more of a rift arose that, as time passed, produced a growing divide between my craft and I that wasn’t noticed until I tried to write again a few weeks later. I remember sitting in front of my computer screen for hours at a time, but eventually leaving the same word document blank, and far more uninviting than it had been when I first started. It felt hopeless and once again I gave up, deciding that I needed this break. That all that writing throughout the year had drained me and I needed more time. I had never once thought that perhaps my struggle came from my constant, invading thoughts and not the lack of creativity itself. It was about a month after that, however when I was getting ready for a flight to Seattle with my stepmom, that my passion for writing began to spark up again. I had heard so much about Seattle and how it was a city you can’t help fall in love with, a city crowded with graffiti and creativity and artwork. The image of watching the city move below me, as I sat on the balcony filling page after page with writing seemed more than inviting, so I decided to pack up all of my pens and hard-bound notebooks and my laptop to once and for all conquer my “writers block” and find the creative part of myself again. It wasn’t until we were sitting at the airport, however, that I reached down into my carry-on bag to find my notebook and realized I had left that very book sitting on my bed at home after rearranging everything in my bag. Trying to problem solve in my head, and explaining the ordeal to my stepmom beside me, she introduced the idea of simply buying a notebook in one of the many airport stop-n-go shops we had passed along the way. The idea sounded senseless considering I had a very detailed organization system, but deciding to take a chance I made my way to the nearest stop, picked out a small red book and came back to my seat to just write. And I wrote. I wrote poems, and snippets of stories, and streams of consciousness, and character maps and everything I could think of. I wrote and wrote and wrote without stopping, not letting myself get in the way and not caring if the book tore or if coffee spilled on the pages or if the words smeared. I realized that it was not that I had a lack of creativity or any form of “writers block,” but rather that I was overthinking everything I wrote and holding myself back. It was as if I had created a dam in my mind to stop all of the ideas and now it had just broken open again, making its way through my hand and onto paper. I realized then that writing has nothing to do with the tight constraints of how you write but more to do with finding that creative space your mind won’t let you into and diving in deep. Since then I have found myself pursuing writing more and getting less frustrated when something doesn’t work out, and instead just moving on to something new and fresh. I journal every day and I read more often and I get random spurts of inspiration that lead to stocked up pieces on my computer and in my notebook, I look back on often. I’ve cleared my mind of harmful thoughts about what to write and how to go about writing and where to start, deciding to simply just let my mind wander and take me somewhere new every time. I finally found the key to writing that I was looking for all along: imprecision. -Lexey Wilson, Junior Editor-in-Chief

Becoming Junior Editor-in-Chief this year on Élan has taught me about writing in ways I didn’t expect, because being editor isn’t just about organizing people or putting together the editions. It’s about cultivating a collection of work that defines the publication. My role forced me to look at writing not just for its individual value, or my person connection, but from a critical eye: seeing the merits in work I don’t immediately connect to, defining why a piece matters outside of my personal experience. When we were reading for the spring book, I had to step in for the first time and make executive decisions about every piece we published: Did it represent Élan? Did it show thoughtful and professional technique? In the end, learning to identify the techniques of a piece of writing has given me a new approach to my own art. Before Élan, I would often produce work, and struggle through understand what exactly happened on the page before me. I knew when a piece was strong, when it fell flat, but I could rarely define why these things happened. Selecting work for our books taught me why: I began to identify specific and thoughtful word choice, structure, characters, imagery, and poetic ambiguity, placed in the right moments, which made the words of a piece come interact with the reader. I was writing poetry myself as these ideas became clearer, and for every step of revision, I found my path more clearly defined than ever before: I picked out where the diction lost its power, where the images came out dull, the metaphors obvious, and moved forward with careful steps to create a new draft. Élan taught me how to read like an editor, and it taught me to become more decisive in my own work. This year was all about learning for me. How to select pieces, how to release a book, how to pick out spelling errors or comma malfunctions in extensive paragraph. How to build up Élan Literary Magazine, constantly improving what we do and how we do it. I move into next year with an immense amount of knowledge, apprehension, and excitement for things to come. I will be challenged as Senior Editor, to make decisions and set plans other members of the staff depend on for releasing each edition. Perhaps most important, I will be educating the new Junior Editor in how to take on these responsibilities, passing on the Douglas Anderson tradition of this literary magazine to the next year, the next audience. Bringing together writers and artists from around the nation, and the world, into a single collection, has been an incredible process this year. Few things have been quite so difficult and demanding, but few have been as rewarding. I have gained such respect for the work of student artists: their bravery, talent, energy, and passion for expression. Above all, next year, I am looking forward to reaching out to as many people as this publication can, gathering the stories of young writers, young artists, to share and inspire. -Ana Shaw, Junior-Editor-in-Chief

Being a part of Élan this year has opened my eyes to art and writing in so many new ways. Before, I think a lot of my perception of art was limited to what I’d seen at Douglas Anderson because I hadn’t really been to many art galleries before or seen professional artwork in an environment outside of the school. Being on the staff, though, I got to read pieces and view art that was completely different than the things I’m used to seeing. At first I was surprised by the pieces because they were nothing like those in the various art galleries at DA, these pieces were more abstract and vibrant. However, I came to appreciate them for their raw talent and how looking at them made me feel like I could create something like that as well. The same goes with the writing that we read as a staff as well. It’s kind of cliché to say, but I was used to the “doom and gloom” that often comes from the depths that the creative writers around me reach into themselves to put into their writing. Knowing that there’s more to write about, different voices to speak from has really opened me up to trying new things on my own time. I’ve been more inspired to write on my own more this year than I have in all three years I’ve been at DA, and I owe a lot of that to Élan and the many artists who submit to the magazine. I also learned what it means to be a part of a team this year. Of course, I’ve been on teams before so I know the importance of working together, but this year taught me how essential that skill is. If we don’t work together and tell each other what we need we’ll sink, and we’ll all sink together. Communication is the most important part of being a team because if you don’t tell each other your needs, nothing can get done. I really hope to bring the same amount of passion and dedication to the staff next year that I’ve experienced this year. Having a smaller staff will be a challenge, which will require more dedication and commitment. However, I really enjoyed the staff this year and I know that I’m ready and willing to dedicate my time to keep it afloat next year. I also hope to bring a better unity to the staff next year. This year, I sometimes felt out the loop when it came to community events or things going on in class. I know that it’s not a priority to keep the people who aren’t a part of an event in the immediate know, but if an extra hand is needed and we have to pull someone in, it’s better if they come in knowing what to do so things will go easier. More importantly, though, I just hope to continue the legacy of Élan successfully and that the coming years continue it as well. -Kinley Dozier - Website/Submissions Editors

Being on the Elan staff has shown me that there is more to being a writer than just putting words to paper. By that I mean writing is a craft that takes practice to be improved on. Earlier in my life, I never really practiced writing. It was never something I did for myself, it was mostly just a prompt I was handed or an assignment due in the next class. Writing like this can make it feel more like a job and less like an art. On the staff, I saw the work put in by other members and realized that being a writer involved work outside a pen and paper. Production of work is very important, of course, but if there is no outreach, no work towards spreading the arts to the community in and out of the walls of the publication, then there is no publication. On the staff, I was exposed to a lot of writing in different genres from very different voices. This exposure has impacted my own way of writing. I think it is very true that to be a better writing, one has to read. I use to think reading published work from masterful writers was what improved another writer’s art. Being able to read the work of young emerging writers has taught me techniques of stylistic choices and character in all genres. What I hope to bring to the staff next year is what I’ve learned personally as a writer and what I learned in my positions on the staff.  Again, as a writer, I learned the importance of reaching people with writing, taking our art to the community. Through the positions I held, I learned what it is to take responsibility for this outreach and what it means to be a member of the staff. -Lindsay Yarn – Website Editor/Creative Non-Fiction Editor

Even though I knew being part of the Élan staff would be a unique experience, I didn’t know the extent to which this experience would impact me. Before joining the staff, I knew that I would write for the rest of my life after leaving Douglas Anderson. That was pretty much a given ever since I first decided that I enjoyed writing, even before getting into this high school, and regardless of the fact that I will pursue a mechanical engineering degree after I leave this school. But Élan made me realized that not only did I want to write after leaving the public education system; I wanted to be part of writing. By this, I mean that I now have a goal to continue my involvement with the literary community following my departure from high school. One of the things that I have actually considered through my college decision-making process is the quality of each college’s literary magazine. I want to be part of something big, and to help spread the word using my own skillset that I have developed through my time in Élan. I want to make a contribution to the literary community through more than my own writing, and I know that I would not have felt this way if I hadn’t been part of the Élan staff. On a lower scale, I wouldn’t have thought of myself as a huge team-player type of person in terms of responsibilities. But the first year that I was part of the staff, I shared the Social Media Editor title with two other people, Dwight and Claudia. I had to learn how to both delegate and handle tasks in order to make the social media branch of Élan function. Even this year, social media is split between me and McKenzie Fox; I handle Facebook and Instagram, and she takes care of Twitter. We depend on each other to make sure each platform has been communicated to, and together, we have helped the follower count for each of these platforms to rise significantly. I know that the legacy that I leave for Élan is the type that must be maintained. What I mean is that the status of our social media reach is in the hands of the person who will take over control of that branch of our magazine, and my accomplishments within this branch are not necessarily permanent. But I think that I gave a lot to our magazine this year in terms of my editorial position, and aside from that, I was one of the main players in the creation of our National Poetry Month Reading and Gallery event. So I leave the responsibility of keeping this legacy alive to the next people to join the Élan staff. It’s kind of hard to let go when I’ve been a part of this magazine for the past two years, but I know that I have to move on to different things, and contribute to different parts of the literary world. And I think that with new staff members, our magazine will continue to grow. So good luck, newcomers! It’s a hefty job and you’ll love every second of it! -Logan Monds, Social Media Editor

Leaving Elan is one of the hardest aspects of graduating from high school. The opportunities in leadership, teamwork, and artistic enrichment that have been shown to me while on this staff are immeasurable, and so are the benefits I’ve reaped from taking on my position as Art Editor. As I spent time on the magazine staff, I continually learned more and more about what it means to be part of a team and adapt to quick changes and roadblocks. The most important task I took on this year was being a part of the group that created the National Poetry Month Reading. We had an amazing opportunity to hold an event at the 5 & Dime Theatre’s new performance space in the heart of downtown; as a result, each one of us treated the curation and realization of the event as if we would never again get a comparable venue. I remember sitting down to make the programs, looking at bland templates on Publisher, and thinking, “Elan deserves better than this. Young artists deserve better than this.” It took me hours to perfect the program - honestly, it was one of my first journeys into creating something like that from scratch - but when it was done, I knew it was something that represented Elan and the artists we give a platform to. This may sound absurd, but those programs were the thing that made me realize what Elan stands for and how much potential we have as a magazine. Seeing the smiling, emotional faces in the audience as sets of teenage writers stepped on stage to spill their hearts made me swell with pride at the fact that I could be a part of something so longstanding and vital. As Mary, one of our editors-in-chief, finished her piece and thanked the audience for coming, I felt a shift not only within the room as the night began to wind down, but a shift within myself; it reminded me of why I write myself. It reminded me of sharing my own struggle, for me, yes, but also for those people who feel they have no voice, or no outlet. In a world which so often undervalues, or completely ignores the thoughts and feelings of artists - especially those who are young students - Elan provides an outlet unlike any other. Taking submissions from around the world, publishing emotionally nuanced art and writing, and being run by a staff comprised of student artists puts us on a level I feel many other magazines haven’t reached. Seeing how many connections we’ve forged and strengthened this year alone makes me so excited to see where Elan goes from here. I hope that Zac and I as Art Editors have left behind some guidance as to what this magazine stands for through the art we’ve helped select this past year; looking back on previous editions, our published art has expanded and begun to create what I feel is a more free-spirited, nuanced, and emotional aesthetic. This magazine’s art has always been beautiful and meaningful. But what I hope to leave behind is the understanding that Elan is enduring, ever-changing, and increasingly relevant; knowing those things opens connections within not only our community, but ourselves. -Mackenzie Steele - Co-Art Editor